TWO Liverpool drug smugglers were today starting long jail terms for a “devious” plan to have their prison sentences slashed.

John Haase, 59, and Paul Bennett, 44, yesterday received 22 and 20 years respectively for perverting the course of justice.

A jury at Southwark crown court took just hours to reach its decision.

The court had heard the two men “tipped off” Customs about massive arms stashes they persuaded people on the outside to plant, even linking some of them to terrorists.

The jury heard about how the flood of fake tips drip-fed to the authorities also saw the seizure of some unusually poor-quality heroin hauls and £20,000 of property.

Their information won them a royal pardon from the then-home secretary Michael Howard, who acted on the recommendation of Haase and Bennett’s sentencing judge.

In truth, they had stashed the arms themselves using illegally smuggled mobile phones in prison to orchestrate the “discoveries”.

Haase’s wife Deborah, 35, of Teynham Avenue, Knowsley village, and her friend Sharon Knowles, 34, of Wadeson Road, Walton, were jailed for four and five years respectively for their roles in the conspiracy.

Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle gave evidence during the trial and previously called for an inquiry into how the men duped the system.

In court he said he met Haase twice in prison obtaining a signed statement outlining how the plot worked.

He said Haase also told him he bribed Mr Howard paying him £400,000 – something the career criminal denied.

Today, Graham Johnson, 40, author of the book Druglord, which highlighted questions about Haase and Bennett’s pardons, welcomed the convictions.

The writer, who also gave evidence, said: “This is justice for all the people who Haase and Bennett got addicted to heroin.

“It is a victory for the parents who watched their sons become burglars and their daughters become prostitutes.

“They spread death and misery on an industrial scale and were awarded with royal pardons.”

Mr Johnson claimed he was exposed to the most dangerous elements of the underworld when details in his exposê became part of the prosecution case.

He was eventually called to testify in their trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Mr Johnson said: “It was never my job to put Haase and Bennett in jail. It was my job to highlight the corruption.

“I was summoned to give evidence and obviously I did not want to. I saw my job as laying down the facts.

“This is a scam which has been going on for years – gangsters have been routinely pulling this off – but Haase and Bennett did it on a new scale. It was a pattern of gullible police and customs officers being ‘twirled’ – duped by supergrasses.

“A massive motivation to convict these two has been the impact of heroin on the lives of people in Liverpool. For these two, the scam is over.”

Detective Superintendent Graham McNulty, from London’s Metropolitan police, said: “This was a long and complex inquiry, investigating offences which took place in the early 1990s.

“The quickness with which the jury made its decision suggests how overwhelming they felt the evidence to be.

“I am really pleased the work of the team was acknowledged with a commendation from the judge.”

Today, Mr Howard told the ECHO: “I am delighted John Haase and Paul Bennett have been brought to justice and the circumstances in which a royal pardon was granted to them have been fully explained.

“I am pleased that John Haase has admitted that the allegations made against me were false.”

Judge says pair struck at basis of system of justice

THE judge sentencing John Haase and Paul Bennett accused the pair of a “devious and manipulative scheme”.

The two men were jailed, along with Haase’s wife Deborah Haase and another woman, Sharon Knowles, yesterday after being found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Justice Cooke told them: “You have all been convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in a unique and sophisticated way.

“It is a very serious offence.

“It strikes at the basis of our whole system of justice by seeking to subvert it.

“In this case, you conspired together to deceive the judge by arranging for the placement of drugs, ammunition and guns and the giving of information about them to the authorities as if it was information on the criminal activities of others.

“The basic underhand cunning and duplicity involved in the scheme can, in some measure, be contrasted with its implementation.”

He said whatever their customs handler thought, some of the seizures in the context of facts known at the time were obvious set-ups.

Justice Cooke added: “There were guns left in empty, unoccupied flats, guns in unlocked cars and guns visible and waiting to be seen and collected.

“As has been plain from the judge’s (sentencing) comments, and indeed from his evidence here, he was very impressed with the information about the guns presented to him as genuine seizures belonging to other criminals, particularly because of the increase in gun crime in the 1990s.”

Justice Cooke said, as a result, the sentencing judge “effectively recommended the home secretary to grant on you, Haase, and you, Bennett, 13-year discounts on the 18-year sentences he gave you”.

Had the sentencing judge known the information from the men was “tainted”, he said that would not have occurred.

Justice Cooke added: “You thus deceived the court and gained an enormous benefit in terms of time to be served.”